Speaking about this week’s verdicts, Mr Straw said: “I’m very pleased and relieved for the families that they have now started to get justice after such a long period of time.”

Talking about his decisions in 1997, he described how there had been “what everybody thought was a thorough inquiry just a few years before” – the Taylor report.

And Mr Straw said he felt bound by Lord Justice Stuart-Smith’s findings.

He said: “If you ask a senior judge to look into something, your hands are tied.”

There was massive criticism of the Stuart-Smith inquiry, including outrage after the judge quipped during a meeting with families: “Have you got a few of your people or are they like the Liverpool fans, turn up at the last minute?”

Lord Falconer, Labour’s attorney general at the time Mr Straw launched the Stuart-Smith review, later expressed remorse at its findings, saying: “It made the families in the Hillsborough disaster feel after one establishment cover-up, here was another.”